“The history of Russian military intervention – whether in Ukraine or Syria, or in its military campaign inside Chechnya – is tainted with blatant contempt for international humanitarian law,” said Anies Kalamar, Amnesty International’s secretary general. .
“The Russian military has repeatedly violated the laws of war by failing to protect civilians and even attack them directly. Russian forces have launched indiscriminate attacks, used banned weapons and sometimes apparently deliberately targeted civilians – politically targeting civilians.”
This statement, made less than a month before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, unfortunately turned out to be prophetic. In the first weeks of the war, the international community reacted with terror as Ukrainian cities came under relentless Russian bombing. Protected civilian infrastructure was hit, as Russian aircraft once targeted Syrian schools and hospitals.
But the scenes unfolding in places like Bucha suggest a familiar kind of violence, reminiscent of Russia’s war in Chechnya.
During the second war in Chechnya – which coincided with Putin’s rise to power – there were also allegations of widespread human rights abuses by Russian troops. In 2000, to cite just one well-known incident, Human Rights Watch investigators documented the summary execution of at least 60 civilians in two suburbs of Grozny, the Chechen capital.
Locals have discovered mass graves in Chechnya. International officials have made investigative trips to the region and made alarming statements about reports of abuse and extrajudicial killings. These statements did not prevent the Russian army from continuing the relentless peace campaign.
Similar evidence of summary executions abounds in cities such as Bucha. A CNN team visited the basement of a building and saw the bodies of five men before being removed by a Ukrainian team. An adviser to Ukrainian Interior Minister Anton Gerashchenko told CNN that the five men had been tortured and executed by Russian soldiers.
CNN can not independently verify Gerashchenko’s allegations. Equally worrying is the alleged treatment of Ukrainian prisoners of war by Russian forces. The ombudsman of the Ukrainian parliament, Liudmyla Denisova, said on Monday that the treatment of prisoners of war by Russia violated the Geneva Conventions, presenting a theoretical hypothesis for possible prosecutions of war crimes.
In a Facebook post on Monday, Denisova said the liberated Ukrainian soldiers “reported on their inhumane treatment by the Russian side: they were being held in a field, in a pit, in a garage. At times, someone came out: he was beaten. with rifle butts, shots next to their ears, frightened “.
CNN can not independently verify Denisova’s allegations.
Igor Zhdanov, a correspondent for Russia’s state-run RT propaganda agency, released a video March 22 showing Ukrainian prisoners of war being processed for “filtering” – a word choice by Zdanov – after his arrest. The videos show masked Russians looking for their captives for tattoos or insignia, which were supposed to show links to nationalist or “neo-Nazi” groups that the Russians have identified as their main enemy in Ukraine.
Zhdanov said in his post that Ukrainian prisoners are being treated humanely. But the choice of his words was ominous. During the war in Chechnya, Russian forces infamously used so-called “filtering camps” to separate civilians from rebel fighters. Legendary Russian investigator Anna Politkovskaya gathered testimonies from Chechen citizens held in detention centers, where detainees said they were held in pits and subjected to electric shocks, beatings and relentless interrogations.
Russian forces have also targeted local Ukrainian mayors for detention – and in at least one case, say Ukrainian officials – in extrajudicial killings.
“Currently, 11 local mayors from the regions of Kiev, Kherson, Mykolaiv and Donetsk are in Russian captivity,” Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Irina Verestsuk said in a message posted on social media on Sunday. He said the Ukrainian government had learned on Saturday that Olga Sukhenko, the mayor of Motyzhyn, a village in the Kiev region, had been killed by Russian forces.
Ivan Fedorov, the mayor of the southern city of Melitopol – who was captured by Russian forces but later released on bail, said Russian forces occupying the city were taking over local operations, saying “the situation is difficult.” , because the Russian soldiers have declared themselves as authorities, but of course they do not care about people and their problems, they only care about getting money from businessmen, [and seizing] their businesses “.
Long before the invasion of Ukraine, the Russian army had a reputation for a culture of cruelty. Russia has a hybrid human resources system with contract soldiers and conscripts. Although the Russian government claims to have taken steps to professionalize its forces, the country’s military still has a brutal pursuit system known as dedovshchina, a notorious tradition that encourages senior conscripts to beat, abuse or even beat young people. conscripts.
Putin recently announced a decree on spring enlistment, setting a target for 134,500 people to be called up to the Russian armed forces. The Russian president initially argued that Russian conscripts would not take part in what Russia had euphemistically called the “special military operation” in Ukraine. But the Russian Defense Ministry later acknowledged that looters were fighting in Ukraine and that Ukrainian forces claimed to have captured a significant number of Russian troops.
Ukrainian investigators are already launching criminal investigations into alleged crimes by Russian forces as more areas are liberated from Russian control – particularly around Kyiv and the northern city of Chernihiv.
It will take days, or maybe weeks, to get a fuller picture of what happened in Bucha. But if the past is a guide, there is no hope that Russian perpetrators will be brought to justice.
CNN’s Alex Hardie contributed to this report. CNN’s Vasco Cotovio contributed a report from Bucha, Ukraine.
